Assault Gun appear to be way too good at killing cyborgs. By way too much it is at least double the fire power of Heavy Machinegun! It is so good that it is listed as an overpowered weapon in low oil maps under the official guide at http://betaguide.wz2100.net/weapons.php. Aren't convinced that Assault Gun is at least twice as good as Heavy Machinegun? I will do a bit of math to prove that this weapon needs to be nerfed.

Example #1
Lets assume it is currently 18:16 game time and everyone is perfect on their research based on http://betaguide.wz2100.net/Research.php. 18:16 is where Dense Composite Alloys Mk2 is researched and close to the 17:13 Assault Gun research time. Machineguns will be upgraded with Hyper Rapid Chaingun 14:40 upgrade and Tungsten-Tipped MG Bullets Mk2 17:57. Cyborgs will be upgraded with Cyborg Dense Composite Alloys Mk2 16:44.

Time for Assault Gun to destroy Machinegunner = 4.8 seconds
Time for Heavy Machinegun to destory Machinegunner = 10.4 seconds
How much better is Assault Gun over Heavy Machinegun = 2.14 times better! More than twice as good

Example #2
It gets even more unfair if the player did not focus on machine gun damage upgrades. Lets say they only research up to APDSB MG Bullets Mk3 10:13.

Time for Assault Gun to destroy Machinegunner = 7.4 seconds
Time for Heavy Machinegun to destory Machinegunner = 16.7 seconds
How much better is Assault Gun over Heavy Machinegun = 2.25 times better! Assault Gun is even stronger with less damage upgrades when compared to Heavy Machinegun.

My point is that Assault has more than twice the damage of Heavy Machinegun for only $50 more. A power spike of this big is huge against a player using cyborgs. It is a very good idea to stop making cyborgs once someone reaches Assault Gun. Perhaps Assault Gun is too strong at counter cyborgs and needs a nerf? Heavy machineguns were pretty good at killing cyborgs, but Assault Gun is on a totally different level of insanely good.

Working out with calculations is important and gives less biased views. Can others verify these calcs? Important to consider other weapons around this point in time, for example how does cannon tech compare as if you went the cannon route does this follow the same patterns? Debate about MG balance has been discussed a few times and requires expert level input who understands the greatest overview of WZ.

"It is so good that it is listed as an overpowered weapon in low oil maps under the official guide at http://betaguide.wz2100.net/weapons.php" - why only the MG in low oil and not others? This would indicate imba to me + the versatility of MG even shooting air.

The cannon line doesn't have quite a big power spike from one weapon to another. If we compare HPV Cannon to Heavy Cannon, the damage increase is not as significant. Even the rocket line upgrade from Lancet -> Tank Killer does not have the huge power spike of Assault Guns although it comes pretty close.

Machineguns are, by design, good for killing cyborgs. Moreover, i don't think that ensuring viability of cyborg-only strategies would lead to better balance. However, there are two problems here: (1) large jump compared to hmg, which can be solved by adding some sort of twin-hmg; (2) too much overall power for timing, which can be solved by further nerfing, even though assault guns were already nerfed considerably throughout the recent rounds of rebalance.

I am not sure why you would still be using machinegunner cyborgs at 18 minutes unless you are using them as shields for your rocket or cannon tanks. Yes, assault guns are strong but that is necessary to be able to kill spam-able regular cyborgs. Low ROF that the later weapons have will not fair well against these low cost, low production time things, so there needs to be something to kill them besides another tree like mortars or vtol bombs. Super cyborgs with lancers and cannons are strong because they are more spam-able than tanks and have distance so you can kite the assault guns on tanks and kill them, but they are glass cannons. Therefore you need to use tanks in front of your cyborgs to block the assault gun fire. FYI, I didn't mention assault gun cyborgs because they are really weak.

The best mix of troops is cyborgs and tanks. Any other composition is based on other variables besides just ground troops (vtol bombs, mortars, and twin assault cannons make cyborgs useless as well). If you want to win with an all cyborg composition you will have to win the early game and kill your opponent fast before they get assault guns. This is very hard to do so you need a backup plan unless you are very confident. Basically you need to be able to adapt once your opponent figures out your strategy and starts countering it.

Warzone 2100 is love, life.
Member of the BDC clan and adept at multiplayer battles. Feel free to PM me questions about multiplayer.

Reading through you can't argue against the numbers and timing much. At the same time cyborg only for most of the game is not that viable, we expect machine guns to do well but not totally overpowering. We have twin machinegun, twin assault gun and twin assault cannon. Why not setup a twin hmg like you said? At the same time perhaps to begin with a slight nerf to the existing assault gun in some fashion (i.e. research time and cost increase, or modify weapon ROF or damage model)

we all know the right mixes and strats to get around this but we're just flat out talking about these comparative jumps between weapons

I cannot advocate nerfing assault gun. As a very heavy multiplayer guy of both low and high oil, there are many times when there are just too many borgs, and assault gun doesn't even cut it. Superborgs are a serious threat in multiplayer, cannon superborgs in particular. AG is helpful, because hmg is a joke to superborgs.

some opposing views between those with more understanding than I probably have, I think arguments against need to be put same as or similar to how Attack has done heavily based off the maths (to avoid biased opinions based from intuition) which is based on limited info like guessing. Supercybrogs are very expensive at the same time even if harder to kill and slower to make. Without this you've got many possible scenarios to cover essentially making progress harder

Hello.
Just noticed this topic.
This topic should be moved to "balance" subforum (viewforum.php?f=42)

List of overpowered weapons is outdated, because it was made before last balance patch.
AG is strong weapon still.

Played recently. I had lost a match to a player who used pure mg. It was high-oil 1x1 map.
One of benefits of using AG is fast build time.
AG cyborgs also very good and they not require any additional research.

You know in real life AA guns can attack ground targets. I'd like to see hurricane/whirlwind as alternative anti-cyborg weapon

Tzeentch wrote:some opposing views between those with more understanding than I probably have, I think arguments against need to be put same as or similar to how Attack has done heavily based off the maths (to avoid biased opinions based from intuition) which is based on limited info like guessing. Supercybrogs are very expensive at the same time even if harder to kill and slower to make. Without this you've got many possible scenarios to cover essentially making progress harder

Machineguns are, by design, good for killing cyborgs. Moreover, i don't think that ensuring viability of cyborg-only strategies would lead to better balance. However, there are two problems here: (1) large jump compared to hmg, which can be solved by adding some sort of twin-hmg; (2) too much overall power for timing, which can be solved by further nerfing, even though assault guns were already nerfed considerably throughout the recent rounds of rebalance.

crab_ wrote:Hello.
Just noticed this topic.
This topic should be moved to "balance" subforum (viewforum.php?f=42)

List of overpowered weapons is outdated, because it was made before last balance patch.
AG is strong weapon still.

Played recently. I had lost a match to a player who used pure mg. It was high-oil 1x1 map.
One of benefits of using phenq AG is fast build time.
AG cyborgs also very good and they not require any additional research.

You know in real life AA guns can attack ground targets. I'd like to see hurricane/whirlwind as alternative anti-cyborg weapon

Balance is the key here. I've myself won some games using only a machine gun. And sometimes I've lost using AG.

crab_ wrote:Hello.
Just noticed this topic.
This topic should be moved to "balance" subforum (viewforum.php?f=42)

List of overpowered weapons is outdated, because it was made before last balance patch.
AG is strong weapon still.

Played recently. I had lost a match to a player who used pure mg. It was high-oil 1x1 map.
One of genf20 plus AG is fast build time.
AG cyborgs also very good and they not require any additional research.

You know in real life AA guns can attack ground targets. I'd like to see hurricane/whirlwind as alternative anti-cyborg weapon

Balance is the key here. I've myself won some games using only a machine gun. And sometimes I've lost using AG.